On Tap: Home-Brewing Supplies, Advice At Local Hobby Shop

It's American Craft Beer Week, so what better way to celebrate than to visit a local brewery and crack open a cold one of Connecticut's finest.

MARA LEE maralee@courant.comThe Hartford Courant

Before Rich Loomis went to work for Brew and Wine Hobby, he was a massage therapist, a clerk at a package store and an assistant manager at Strawberries music store.

If you think the package store experience was the best preparation for his current gig, you'd be wrong.

"Somebody comes into a CD store and sings a bar, you have to know the artist and match them up with what they're looking for," said Loomis, now co-owner of the home-brew and winemaking supplies store.

It's the same now. "They might know they want a red wine [kit] and they might know they want a stout," he said, but it's up to the staff to figure out what will please them most.

Bob Carangelo of Glastonbury was shopping there recently on a weekday afternoon, and he said he spends $30 to $40 on ingredients to brew beer a couple of times a year. He first shopped there almost 20 years ago, but hasn't always been a regular customer.

"The fellow who runs the desk here is very, very helpful," he said. "He's extremely helpful and knowledgeable."

That kind of customer service seems to be fueling steady growth for the store, though the economy is also playing a role, Loomis believes.

The growing popularity of craft beers can't hurt. This week was CT Beer Week and Sunday is the American Homebrewers Association rally at Backeast Brewery in Bloomfield. Store staff will attend, and they're donating prizes to the raffle.

Beer and Wine Hobby was founded 38 years ago, and Loomis started working there four years ago under the second owner, a wine lover who only owned it for two years.

Nearly three years ago, Loomis and a partner bought the place.

From the beginning of 2010 through the end of 2012, sales grew by 40 percent. And Loomis said while he hasn't crunched the numbers in 2013, it seems like they've done four months' worth of business in the first three months.

Brew and Wine Hobby moved in September, doubling its space to just under 5,000 square feet. Nearly all of its close neighbors are industrial businesses. But on a busy weekday, he'll have about 35 customers, and on a busy Saturday, he'll have more than 100.

Loomis now employs two people, though he's about to lose Dana Borque to a new business Loomis will also have a stake in — Firefly Hollow, a brewery and tap room scheduled to launch in Bristol within two months.

Borque asked in 2010 if he could volunteer at Brew and Wine Hobby. Loomis said he'd hire him one day a week, because that was all he could afford. Now his employees add another 60 hours a week of coverage, not counting independent contractors who run hands-on classes.

Those workers make $10 to $12 an hour, and Loomis, who first decided to join the business because he had a child on the way, still makes just $40,000, about the same he did as a masseur, but he works at least 60 hours a week. "This wasn't quite the jump up [in pay] I expected," he said.

He hopes that as the store continues to grow, he might be able to pay himself more. Loomis supports a family of four on that salary.

A distributor's representative told him recently: "I expect you to do about a million in gross sales" in a few years. His response: "Really?!"

Hands-on classes at the store began at the beginning of this year, and are held most Saturdays. Since they began, about 10 percent of customers each week are first-time buyers.

On a recent Saturday, Peter Olguin of West Hartford and his wife, Betsy, were among those bottling beer they had brewed in the store a week earlier, under Borque's supervision.

"You have to be a little bit of a do-it-yourselfer," Olguin said to Borque as they worked, describing who would get hooked on home-brewing.

While the DIY aesthetic has blossomed in recent years, Loomis said he thinks that segment is about 20 percent of his customers.

"Those are the people that stick with it the longest," he said.

But Loomis said the largest segment of his customers are those looking to save money — and that motive is why he thinks the poor economy is driving growth. You can get nearly 50 bottles of beer for $30 of ingredients, and 28 bottles of wine for $100. The frugality motive is also a challenge for the store. Home-brewers "bargain-hunt everything," he said.

And speaking of bargain-hunting, Loomis said a Living Social deal he offered on classes is working beautifully. Most of the class attendees on a recent Saturday got the discount. Loomis said of a typical 12-person class, two households will buy the equipment and supplies that day, and he thinks two others come in over the next few months.

"We had a huge influx of people who were online shoppers, didn't know we were here," he said. And each class usually has two couples who have never tried it.

Jen Kirchner, 31, of Berlin, bought the class for her husband, Shaun Cecil, 33. She said they'd definitely start brewing at home.